Dear Beginner Blogger | keep on keepin' on

About a month ago, a friend and I commiserated about putting a lot of effort into growing our blogs, and not really seeing the fruits of our labor. It's challenging when you can no longer say, "Oh, I just started my blog." And when you've already outgrown the follow-up, "Oh, I only just started taking blogging more seriously."

The truth is, this beginner technically isn't a beginner anymore. But, as long as I'm choosing to keep learning and growing, I'll always be a beginner in some aspect of this... hobby? pursuit of an at-home career? passion? ministry?... wonderful world I'm not able to categorize.

This is the encouragement I wrote for myself and shared with that blogging friend.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

There are a lot of reasons things may not be growing as quickly as I'd like. But that's okay. Slow and steady improvement leads to big things in the future; I (we) just can't lose hope. There also may be something missing, and sometimes it takes time and trial and error to figure that out. Whatever my blogging motivations/goals/inspirations, am I committed to the full 26.2 miles, or am I taking a jog around the blog?

Stats only really matter to advertisers.

I know, that's contradictory to everything everyone else says, but it's true--we can't place our value or our success/failure on high or low stats. Sure, it's good to be aware of them as one small indicator of growth and maybe to show potential sponsors. But ultimately, it's about so much more than stats--it's more about the specific individuals those stats represent. What am I doing to meet, help, and connect with that one person?

Audience is never just one group of people.

Sure, it'd be great if I had thousands of followers that all specifically read my blog, shared my stuff and were my faithful fans (my "tribe"). But that's just not how it goes. Especially where I'm at now, and especially when there's thousands of other people striving for the same thing. So I've taken a new understanding for my audience--that it comes from a lot of different sources and that's okay.

I'm involved in an online forum relevant to my blog topics and I get traffic from there--some have even stayed to be recurring readers. I make an effort to comment on other people's blogs when I see something I connect with and sometimes get their readership in return. I'm trying more to guest post, and connect with others. And I have a few blog posts that keep getting repinned, and thus reaching new audiences. All of these pieces together make my audience.

Maybe they don't all return, but even people that visit my blog once are still an important part of my readership. What am I doing to make their one visit worthwhile?